Global Update
These Twins Were Born Minutes Apart, But Have Different Dads; The Truth Tore One Sister Apart.
A routine at-home DNA test revealed a biological bombshell: Michelle and Lavinia Osbourne are half-sisters, not full twins. The rare phenomenon known as heteropaternal superfecundation has only been documented about 20 times worldwide.
For 46 years, Lavinia Osbourne believed she and her twin sister Michelle shared something unbreakable, a bond forged in the same womb, born minutes apart, and raised as each other’s only constant in a childhood marked by abandonment and instability.
“She was the one thing that belonged to me, the one thing that I was certain about, the one thing that I was sure of,” Lavinia told the BBC. “And then she wasn’t.”
In September 2022, Lavinia clicked on an email containing the results of an at-home DNA test. She was filled with a sense of dread.
“Maybe subconsciously I knew,” she says.
The results revealed something astonishing: she and Michelle, non-identical twins born in Nottingham, England, in 1976, do not share the same father. They are half-sisters who happened to share a womb, a birth date, and a mother.
They exist because of an incredibly rare biological process called heteropaternal superfecundation. For it to happen, a woman must release more than one egg during the same cycle, both eggs must be fertilized by sperm from different men within a short window of time, and both embryos must survive the pregnancy.
Scientists have identified only about 20 such cases worldwide. Lavinia and Michelle are believed to be the only documented set of twins with different fathers in the United Kingdom.
A Childhood Without Roots
The twins’ mother was just 19 years old and vulnerable when she gave birth to them. She had suffered abuse at the hands of her stepfather and had spent much of her own childhood bouncing between foster care and children’s homes.
Whenever the girls asked who their father was, their mother always gave the same name: James. But James was never in their lives.
When the twins were five years old, their mother left for university in London — and left her daughters behind in Nottingham with her best friend’s mother, a stern woman they called “grandma.” The only stability the girls had was each other.
“Grandma was strict, not very emotional, not very cuddly. The one constant I had was Michelle,” Lavinia says.
Michelle felt the same: “It was her and I against the world.”
By their mid-teens, James reentered their lives. Lavinia tracked him down and felt she recognized herself in him. But Michelle never felt sure. Deep down, she had niggling doubts. By late 2021, their mother had developed early-onset dementia and could no longer answer their questions.
“I just thought, you don’t even look anything like me,” Michelle says. “So I bought myself a kit.”
The Bombshell Arrives
Michelle’s DNA results arrived on February 14, 2022 — the same day their mother died. James’s last name did not appear in Michelle’s paternal lineage. He wasn’t her father.
After weeks of investigation, Michelle discovered that her biological father was a man named Alex, the brother of a woman who had been friends with their mother. Relatives warned Michelle that Alex had struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction for years and was living on the streets.
But Lavinia still believed James was her father — until she decided to take her own test.
When she opened her results, she was devastated. James wasn’t her father either. And neither was Alex. Her twin sister was her half-sister.
“I was angry with Michelle for having me go through this, because I just didn’t want this reality,” Lavinia says.
Finding Arthur
Michelle was determined to find answers for her sister. Combing through Lavinia’s DNA results, she identified a man named Arthur as Lavinia’s biological father. The twins drove to meet him at his home in West London.
“He was a little bit nervous, but he’s got an exuberant character, like me,” Lavinia says. At the end of their meeting, she kissed Arthur on the cheek. “I just felt compelled, drawn to do it.”
The twins later asked Arthur what he knew about how they came to be conceived. His answer painted a picture of a young woman in crisis.
He said, “Your mother knocked on my door. She was very upset. She was crying,” Michelle recalls. “She went to him because she wasn’t safe, and she was in shock.”
Their mother is no longer alive to tell her side of the story. But the twins now understand that she was a traumatized young woman who turned to different men for comfort or safety within a very short window of time — resulting in the rare biological event that produced them.
Michelle was eventually able to meet her own biological father, Alex. He was clearly under the influence of drugs. The resemblance was undeniable — but so was the distance.
“He’s mine, I’m his, but I didn’t feel like he’s someone I need to take forward in my future with me,” Michelle says. “I just needed to know.”
Two Miracles, One Bond
The twins will never know whether their mother suspected they had different fathers. “It must have driven her crazy,” Lavinia says. “She must have seen something, felt something.”
“I think in the back of Mummy’s head, she knew, but she was in great denial,” Michelle adds.
Today, Lavinia and Arthur are close, seeing each other several times a month — often alongside Michelle, whom Arthur has told she can also call him Dad.
For Lavinia, the devastating revelation has led to an unexpected gift. “I feel like I’ve found a place to belong, and that place is with my dad,” she says.
For Michelle, the truth brought answers but not a new relationship. She has made peace with that.
“We’re miracles,” Lavinia says. “We’re always going to have a closeness that can’t be broken.”
“She’s my twin sister,” Michelle nods. “Nothing takes away from that.”
Global Update
Xenophobic South Africa Seeks to Deport Beauty Queen at Center of Long-Running Immigration Dispute
Beauty queen Chidimma Adetshina has reiterated that she was born in South Africa and accused authorities of unfairly targeting her as she continues to challenge efforts to deport her from the country.
Adetshina, 25, made the comments after a court hearing in Cape Town, where the South African government’s bid to have her detained was postponed until February 2027.
“I remind everyone that I was born in South Africa,” Adetshina said. “I have applied through the proper legal channels to have my status and citizenship determined.”
The former Miss South Africa finalist said she believes authorities have attempted to make an example of her through the case.
“There has been an attempt by the South African authorities to make an example of me with this case,” she said.
She also warned against allowing xenophobia and misinformation to influence how people are treated, comments that appeared to address protesters gathered outside the court demanding her deportation.
Chidimma Adetshina’s citizenship dispute
Adetshina was born in Soweto and grew up in Cape Town, according to previous interviews. Her mother, Anabela Rungo, has Mozambican roots, while her father is Nigerian.
Questions about Adetshina’s citizenship emerged after she became a finalist in the 2024 Miss South Africa competition. Critics questioned whether she was eligible to participate because of her parents’ backgrounds.
The controversy ultimately led Adetshina to withdraw from the competition. South African authorities later stripped her of her South African identity and travel documents following allegations that her mother had committed identity fraud to obtain South African nationality.
Rungo’s South African citizenship was revoked in 2025.
South African law does not automatically grant citizenship to every person born in the country. In general, citizenship by birth depends on factors including whether at least one parent is a South African citizen or permanent resident.
Adetshina has maintained that South Africa is her home and that she was born there.
From Miss South Africa controversy to Miss Universe Nigeria
After leaving South Africa in 2024, Adetshina was invited to compete in the Miss Universe Nigeria pageant. She went on to win the title, giving her a new platform after the controversy surrounding her participation in Miss South Africa.
Her legal problems in South Africa continued, however.
She was arrested in June 2026 and subsequently released on warning after being accused of unlawfully re-entering the country.
During the latest proceedings, South Africa’s Home Affairs Department reportedly argued that Adetshina had applied for a South African visa while she was in Nigeria and obtained Nigerian passports for herself and her son, which officials said raised questions about her South African citizenship.
Officials also alleged that she subsequently entered South Africa illegally through a border post in Mozambique.
Adetshina is challenging the Home Affairs Department’s decision to deport her. Her case was postponed to February 2027 to allow the review proceedings concerning her immigration status to be finalised.
She remains free while those proceedings continue.
Protesters call for deportation
The case has also become a flashpoint in South Africa’s broader debate over immigration.
Members of anti-migrant group March and March gathered outside the Cape Town courthouse and called for Adetshina to be deported. Protesters reportedly followed her vehicle as she left the court.
Adetshina’s warning about xenophobia and misinformation comes as her case continues to attract significant public attention.
“I have applied through the proper legal channels to have my status and citizenship determined,” she said, emphasizing that the legal process should determine her status rather than public pressure.
The next major development in the case is expected in February 2027, when proceedings are scheduled to resume.
Global Update
AI Firms Are Buying, Scanning Millions of Books to Train Large Language Models and then Destroying the Books
There is an ongoing, secretive practice by artificial intelligence companies in which they acquire millions of physical books, only to destroy them after scanning their contents to train large language models (LLMs).
The practice, revealed through investigative reporting and unsealed legal documents, has raised urgent questions about copyright, cultural preservation, and the ethics of AI development.
Project Panama: The Secretive Operation
Internal documents unsealed in legal filings revealed that Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI assistant, launched a clandestine operation codenamed “Project Panama” —described in an internal planning document as “our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.”
“We don’t want it to be known that we’re working on this,” the document stated, according to reports from The Washington Post.
The operation involved using hydraulic-powered cutting machines to remove book spines and slice individual pages, which were then scanned with industrial-grade imaging equipment before being discarded.
The Legal Loophole
Anthropic and other AI companies have been able to evade copyright challenges by relying on the first-sale doctrine—a legal principle that allows a buyer to do what they want with a physical item after purchasing it.
This doctrine, which enables the second-hand book trade to exist, has now created a new market explicitly catering to AI companies seeking vast quantities of old books.
In a 2025 ruling, a judge found that converting lawfully purchased print books into non-distributed digital library copies was “fair use” because the digital copies replaced the purchased books without increasing the library’s copy count.
However, critics argue that destruction of the original physical copies goes far beyond what fair use was intended to protect.
A $1.5 Billion Settlement
Earlier this month, a judge approved a $1.5 billion payment in a class action lawsuit brought against Anthropic by a group of authors whose pirated work had been used to train Claude.
Despite this settlement, the physical destruction of books continues, with companies arguing that once a book is lawfully purchased, they are free to do with it as they please.
Mixed Feelings Among Booksellers
The practice has created an ethical dilemma within the antiquarian book trade.
“Personally have mixed feelings about all of this,” one bookseller told 404 Media. “It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell.”
“I’ve been well-suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books. On the other hand, I don’t like the end-use, and I don’t like that uncommon books are being pulped.”
A Broader Industry Practice
Anthropic is not alone in this practice. According to Novara Media, “The world’s biggest AI companies are buying antiquarian books en masse so they can be scanned to train their large language models before being destroyed.”
The revelation has sparked outrage among historians, authors, and cultural preservation advocates.
Historian Margarita Lila Rosa, who has been documenting the practice, shared videos showing the destruction process on social media.
“How did we miss this?” she wrote. “First the spine is removed and then the book is disposed of.”
What This Means for Knowledge Preservation
The destruction of physical books—particularly rare and antiquarian volumes—raises profound concerns about cultural heritage and the preservation of human knowledge.
While digital copies may preserve the text itself, critics argue that the physical destruction of unique or uncommon books represents an irreversible loss to humanity’s cultural record.
The Bigger Picture
The controversy highlights a broader tension in the AI industry: the insatiable demand for training data versus the rights of creators and the preservation of cultural artefacts.
As AI companies continue to scale their models, the pressure to acquire vast amounts of human-authored text will only intensify—raising difficult questions about what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of technological progress.
Sources: The Washington Post, Novara Media, 404 Media, unsealed court documents
The Chinese community in Ghana, joined by Ghanaian friends and officials, celebrated the Lantern Festival with a vibrant gala at the forecourt of Ghana’s Parliament House in Accra, highlighting the growing cultural integration and strong bilateral relations between the two nations.
The event, held on Sunday, June 21, 2026, ahead of the Lantern Festival on Tuesday, featured captivating performances by the Anhui Performing Arts Group and other cultural troupes, showcasing traditional Chinese dance and music.
A food bazaar offering authentic Chinese delicacies set a festive tone, drawing both Chinese residents and local guests. The celebration underscored the sense of community and belonging among Chinese nationals living in Ghana.
Addressing the gathering, Li Yang, Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the Chinese Embassy in Ghana, stressed the significance of the Lantern Festival as a symbol of reunion, prosperity, and peace.
He noted that 2026 marks the 66th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Ghana, as well as the 70th anniversary of China-Africa diplomatic ties.
Li reaffirmed China’s commitment to deepening cooperation with Ghana and Africa through initiatives such as the China-Africa Year of People-to-People Exchanges and the Initiative on Cooperation Supporting Modernization in Africa.
(Photo by Seth/Xinhua)
Ghanaian officials expressed similar warmth. Food and Agriculture Minister Eric Opoku welcomed Chinese investors to partner in Ghana’s agricultural transformation, citing opportunities in irrigation, farm mechanization, agro-processing, and industrial zones.
Deputy Defence Minister Ernest Brogya Genfi conveyed President John Dramani Mahama’s greetings and praised the Chinese community for their substantial contributions to Ghana’s economy through investments in manufacturing, commerce, and hospitality.
The high-profile celebration at Parliament House reflects the stable and increasingly rooted presence of the Chinese community in Ghana, serving as a testament to the maturing strategic partnership between the two countries.
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